Adaptive Curmudgeon

There’s only one intersection in that town. Three stop signs and one road with right of way. I came to a full stop just as a huge tow truck rolled through the intersection. It was one of those giant trucks meant for towing semis. It was lugging a semi tractor and its 60’ grain trailer.

“Man I hope that grain trailer is empty.” I thought. I’m not sure how much those huge tow trucks can handle but the driver had 26 out of 28 wheels on the ground (towed semi’s drive wheels were suspended) and that’s a workout for anyone. I once read a formula that implied a ratio between wheelbase and weight capacity. I’ve since forgotten it, but the tow truck was very long. It had to be a hell of a load. He had a chase car and he deserved it.

Plunk! The first raindrop hit like a marble dropped from space. Widely spread big fat water drops were starting to fall. They landed loudly on my helmet and splattered into my shoulders. They soaked instantly through my mesh jacket. Cold as ice. I’m not an expert in atmospheric physics but surely they came close to being hailstones.

I revved the engine anxiously but the tow truck was followed closely by three fire trucks from the local VFD. Something interesting had happened. I hadn’t noticed any sign the towed semi had burned, but then again I hadn’t been looking. Three fire trucks and the biggest tow rig in the county? There are stories that I don’t know and I was seeing clues of one. In the old days, I’d read about it in tomorrow’s newspaper. Now I’ll either hear gossip or never know.

Plunk, plunk, whap! More drops fell and they fell hard; less like rain and more like little water balloons filled with icewater. I patiently waited for the VFD to lumber through the intersection. They pulled off into the fire department. Finally my coast was clear.

You might think I lit it up and blasted through the intersection. Of course not! Fresh rain on hot pavement is a recipe for a thin film of oily water and correspondingly low traction. I rolled out with the decorum of a limousine carrying royalty.

A half mile later I was up to highway speeds and out of town. Unfortunately, the rain had overtaken me; no longer individual raindrops but a steady pummeling on my helmet. Rain soaked through my jeans and my mesh jacket (as it was designed) offered no protection. Even so, I was clearly moving faster than the front. I was in steady rain but nothing exceptional. In my rear view mirror lightning flashed in rapid succession as the maelstrom let loose on the town I’d just left. Better to be here than back there!

Rain battered my face shield and blurred some of my vision. The sun hadn’t set but the clouds obscured it to a false dusk. I let off the throttle. No point in haste. Avoidance and evasion were played out. Now I was fully involved with an “interesting” ride. I might as well accept it and work with the risks as they are and not as they seemed when I was happily reading a paperback just 15 minutes ago.

Statistically, motorcycles are deadly. I know that. You know that. Grandma knew it too. Back in her day she rode a Harley. When this bike was new I gave her a ride on it. She’s dead now. I miss her. Someday I’ll be dead too. I know that. You know that. Current times being what they are, I have a feeling that lots of chronological adults are still grappling with the concept.

Statistically, rain is a serious additional risk to a motorcycle. There are cyclists that do not ride in rain. I am not one of them.

Statistically, darkness is a serious additional risk to a motorcycle. There are cyclists that do not ride at night. I am not one of them.

I rode on through the rain and darkness; paying very careful attention to my surroundings. What other life is there to live?

I’m not done yet…

Clouds which had been threatening all afternoon had coalesced into a deep opaque whole. Sunset was nigh. Low angle light slipped between the darkening skies above and the shimmering horizon below; like heat softened metal hovering just above the anvil. A hammer was about to fall.

I turned a full 360 degrees assessing the situation. It didn’t look good. The brooding skies I’d first noticed were the best of the lot. In the other direction the clouds looked positively malevolent. Wind was beginning to gust. I know the prevailing winds of the area. It was blowing in the wrong direction. Not good.

My plan had been to top off at the nearby gas station. That idea went out the window. This wasn’t yet an emergency, but it wasn’t a good time to fiddle fart around.

My motorcycle, a carbureted anachronism, takes a few seconds to warm up. I’m in the habit of thumbing the ignition while I’m standing next to it putting on my helmet.

Hustling to secure my helmet I became aware the bike was running without thinking about starting it. It was as if I’d willed the beast to life. Jacket zipped, gloves tightened, leg over, clutch in, kickstand up, clicked into gear, and under way. It happened in the smooth motion that comes from a thousand iterations and the tacit acknowledgment that I wanted to be anywhere but there.

Rolling out of the tiny town was frustrating. It took restraint to keep her under 30 MPH. The local yokel cops are pretty decent overall but they’ll gladly help balance their budget with a ticket issued to a flighty biker. So I reined in a “fight or flight” reaction even as I registered that not a soul was out and about. Small towns “roll up the sidewalks” early but even so I expected some human activity.

Wheeling through what felt like a ghost town at exactly the speed limit gave my brain time to catch up with my situation. A storm, a very bad one, was about to hit. You’d have to be a fool not to acknowledge that! Then again, so what? I’ve ridden through storms before. It’s a skill like any other; keep the wheels on the ground and don’t panic. You’ll be fine. The worst I’d get is soaked.

As my grandmother used to say “so you’re wet, you won’t melt!”

Wise lady she was. Also, not one to put up with bullshit. I hope I live up to her ways.

I did a little mental math. The winds were blowing south. I was heading south. The full force of the storm was still impending and not a done deal. If I could get out of town I’d be on open road and there’s not many storms that can outrun a bike. I might get wet but I’d likely be out of it before things got too exciting.

More to come…

The day had been unconscionably hot. Humidity hung like a haze over the day’s plans and lowered my productivity. I’d worked my tractor as much as I dared and then shut it down to cool. (The same heat that affects me will affect a machine. There’s nothing heroic about abusing equipment; especially equipment which is an expensive bitch to repair and maintain.)

By late afternoon, clouds had built up. It was still muggy and uncomfortable but the dam would burst in due time. Sooner or later rain would cool things down.

Fretting over lost work hours (I have more to do than time to do it) I made a heroic last stand at the woodshed. Covered with sweat and sawdust I used my little electric chainsaw to buck a small pile of limbwood I’d stashed on the sawbuck. Soon I had it stacked in the woodshed and was pleased to have made progress against the ever present specter of winter. (I’m impressed with the saw. I’d run one battery down and half of another battery without overheating the motor; though the handle did get a bit warm. I grudgingly admit a non-gas saw is darned handy for small jobs.)

By then I was all worked out. I took shelter inside. I wasn’t in the sweltering sun but it still wasn’t particularly cool. Folks might not believe it but not every building has central AC. I hydrated and consoled myself that I’d worked pretty well for my age. I’d been reluctantly but reasonably wise about it. When I was 19 I’d have accomplished twice as much, but I’d have likely overtaxed myself and spent the next day or two burned out.

A little before sunset I decided I needed ice cream. Had I not worked? Did I not deserve a reward? The rain hadn’t materialized and, if I hurried, the nearest ice cream shop would still be open. I hopped on my motorcycle and scooted away.

I have a protective mesh jacket that’s ideal in these circumstances. I bought it for a ride across Death Valley many years ago and always like when I can use it. It’s useless in all but the worst heat so rarely get to wear it. After a long bitter winter and an ugly spring that was nearly as bad as winter, it felt great to wear my “desert jacket”. I let the winds flow through the mesh and felt the efforts of the day ebbing from my core.

Ice cream is delicious, especially if you earned it. I felt like a kid again. I remembered hot days stacking hay bales and the ensuing ice cream cones. Then again, I’m very glad I don’t have to stack hay bales. All hail hydraulics and round bales!

I sat in the ice cream shop, which had better air conditioning than I’d left, and idly read a book. Not a Kindle download either. It was a plain old dead tree paperback. An old sci-fi book from 1976; written before science fiction got weak and crawled up its own ass. I’d read it before but was nonetheless consumed with the story.

Eventually it dawned on me that I was the only one in the ice cream shop. They were pointedly mopping the floor in my direction. I pulled myself out of the story and, mumbling apologies, shuffled for the door.

I stepped from that ice cream shop into a different world.

Stay tuned…

I was talking with a fellow about President “Most Votes In American History” Biden’s sanctions. Intended to punish Russia after it entered Ukraine, they’ve been somewhere between an “own goal” and a faceplant. I suppose charitably you could say they haven’t yet bankrupted everyone who’s against Russia… yet.

Is Pyrrhic sanctions a legit phrase?

I used an example from Blazing Saddles but he’d never seen Blazing Saddles! I was shocked; what a nightmare! This is far more important than geopolitics! Everyone needs to see Blazing Saddles!

[My last post had too much politics. I apologize. I was trying to describe how manufactured events continue being manufactured with or without reality based causes. I probably failed. Please cut me some slack, I posted from McDonalds and no deep thoughts have ever emerged from that venue. I offer today a more positive post.]

Ten minutes. No words. No politics. No bullshit. Absolutely gorgeous and poignant.

Do yourself a favor and schedule ten minutes. Turn off the phone. Hide from the kids. Pour yourself a cup of coffee (or bourbon) and enjoy a glimpse of completely positive art.

I’ve been “off grid” and will stay off a little longer. This is for three reasons.

1. I’m in a place with chitty cell service.
2. Even if I had service, I’m super busy and have no time to play emotional grabass amid propaganda.
3. The post collapse reason: I fear the “Schrödinger’s Cat of Stupid”.

Reason #3 is new. Constant serial failed panics have been happening weekly or bi-weekly for a long time, I dread to see the next stupid irrational thing.

I say “failed panics” because they have a purpose. Cretins in DC (of both parties) want the populace perpetually alarmed and therefore easily manipulated. It worked for a while but, like junkies hitting bottom, the people are exhausted and the drug of panic has less pull than it once did.

Americans in general are slowly, gradually, incrementally, pulling their head out of their ass. They’re no longer exhibiting the desired response of knee jerk deference to authorities. Fine grained central control is no longer just assumed to be OK. Cretins in DC are terrified!

The last two years stampeding about in an orgy of “I support the latest thing” has run its course. Free thinkers cut loose ages ago but even the weakest of minds have been overstimulated and two years of dumb shit has shut down their cerebellum. Many are embarrassed by what they did. Post-Covid true believers have the hangover feel. “Did I really do that?” A few hopeless Kool-aid drinkers are still pining for the return of COVID but nobody takes them seriously anymore. DC quakes in fear as the masses settle back to earth.

Objective truth is a thing which exists whether you wish it or not.

The sane, diminished in numbers but still populous, no longer just accepts things. The precursors to cattle cars and trashing the rule of law “just for a few weeks during the current emergency” is a harder sale. Folks are standing on the loading ramp to the Utopian new world order but they’ve stopped stumbling forward. They’re thinking. “Pretty much everything they’ve said for two years has been a lie or blown up their face, why should I do what’s demanded again?”

Those of us who never drank the Kool-aid have also changed. We’re less motivated to try talking the crowd out of their latest faceplant. We shrug and continue doing what we do… independently. “If they haven’t figured it out by now, it’s not our problem.”

I feel like that. Don’t you? After COVID and the 2020 election, I’m more willing to let people experience the fruits of their decisions. Some folks learn from history, but others must piss on the electric fence. Who am I to rob them of the experience?

Karen now has to choose between baby formula that doesn’t exist and $6 gas to get to a job that doesn’t matter but the boss desperately wants her to commute. I don’t care. I no longer wish to talk her out of her next dumb idea. Take on massive debt for an EV car? Sure. A degree in advanced pointlessness? Fine. Fifteen boosters, an all yoghurt diet, and some pyramid crystals you bought online? Sure. Get a face tattoo while you’re at it; it’ll be fun! I feel freed of what formerly was a kind of responsibility. The Gods of the Copybook Headings will sort everything out.

The reduction in overall mad stampeding panic is also a time of risk. People who used fear to get power are desperate to restart panic anew. They’re flipping over rocks and looking for ghosts.

“We gotta’ protect our phony baloney jobs!” They whine. Then they fire up the panic machine: “Have you heard about monkeypox? What about greedy oil companies, Russian bogeymen, scary racist libertarian whackdoodles, people who don’t check in with Facebook, ghost guns, radon, asbestos, hanta virus, gluten, melting glaciers?” They also try random orders, “get another booster shot or white supremacists could hack your Netflix account!” It’s not working.

Reality seeps through the façade. Nobody cares what some douchebag said on Twitter on if gas prices have doubled (tripled?) and you’re out of cash. The Afghanistan retreat of 2021 makes following President Droolcup into Ukraine sound like a bad bet. Nobody who just dropped an extra two bucks on a six pack of beer to wash away the sorrows of an evaporating 401(k) is interested in the nutsack on a faux-oppressed YouTube influencer.

Which brings me to Schrödinger’s Cat. Until you open the box, the cat is both alive and dead. Once you peek, the form is chosen.

As soon as I plug back into the Matrix, the choice will be made. I sense that society will inevitably choose one dumb distraction among many. What will it be?

Here are my guesses:

• Fight Russia until the last Ukrainian is dead? Nah! That’s played out. (When I checked out propaganda was still reporting that plucky glorious Ukrainian freedom fighters were beating Russkie ass like a rented mule. Sure, and I’m a Chinese jet pilot. I don’t know if the press is still sticking to the narrative but sooner or later the real situation will be apparent.)
• A close subset would be a false flag blamed on Russia. It won’t work in 2022. No matter how ugly or photogenic it is, we’re just not in the mood to wrap in the flag and have a parade on behalf of the guy who won more votes than any other candidate in history but went sub-Carter in a year. At this point, if someone nukes Baltimore I won’t believe it until I drive there and wave a Geiger counter myself. Even then I’ll wonder which three letter agency set it off.
• Diesel gets expensive enough that truckers just park their rigs? Even odds on that. Trucks deliver stuff and life without stuff sucks. Biden having a press event where he shrieks at truckers (as if that’ll start a Kenworth’s engine) would fit his pattern.
• Gas breaks $5 by July 4th and “normie the griller” has a fit? Nah! It comes on the heels of an Orange Menace that made American into a net exporter. We all know it could happen again.
• Food shortage; like for real this time? “We’re out of Cool Ranch Doritos but there are Pringles” turns into “I will fight you for this can of beans”. Shortages are more or less baked in the cake now but I don’t buy this one for fat complacent Americans.
• Taiwan? Hard to say but China seems too patient. Why rush things in 2022 when we’re already flaming out? Regardless of when it happens, we won’t be able to do jack shit. Look at a globe. Taiwan will fall unless Taiwan is monumentally bad ass, and that doesn’t appear to be the case. As for us? Nations that can’t reliably make baby formula aren’t equipped to pick fights with China.
• A big power outage? That’s a good possibility! Oft predicted, and seasonally practiced for a decade in California. Would two weeks of no hot water in Newark or no AC in Phoenix work in President Potato’s favor?
• The January 6th commission? Bwa ha ha ha ha… no fuckin way! If Stalinist show trials were going to work, they’ve been unleashed in 2021.
• Riot season? I doubt that one too. Deplorable America is more or less willing to let St. Louis or Portland burn itself to the ground. We just don’t care anymore. If cities want to set their own ass on fire, fuck ’em. Also, we know it won’t spread. Rioters who leave the support of city politics will be instantly roasted by rednecks who’ve been waiting their whole lives for the opportunity to do it.
• Gun control? Nah! It’s a cliché. Rhinos will roll over because they’re gutless pussies but who cares? Someone somewhere will pass something about adjustable drift pins on rifles a particular shade of magazine capacity because 9mm blows lungs through the bayonet lug… blah blah blah. Clinton did in in 1994 and all he did was cost Al Gore his turn at the big chair. That was 28 years ago and they’ve spent every intervening moment convincing us to support the second amendment. We even got a two year refresher course! Government sponsored riots in 2020, Australia going full Nuremberg (along with Europe, New Zealand, and Canada), and one hour response times in a school shootings are why Americans have been buying a million guns a month. Burning Minneapolis and subsequently cheating in an election won’t convince anyone to disarm. Also, people who drop their own coin on a firearm are more serious than dipshits preening on Twitter.

None of those feel right. Returning the people to a mindless froth will require something bigger, dumber, wilder, more dangerous, and more irrational. I draw a blank trying to imagine it. I write about squirrels and talk to trees but I just can go that dumb.

Suppose Godzilla fucks Cthulhu and gets Monkeypox in Detroit while stepping on a gay kitten during a riot about banned, gluten free, student loans on Independence day during a meteor shower? That’s just another Tuesday now.

I feel a weird urge to stay out of it. Let the rest of the world decide the reason for their newest panic. Whatever the form of the destroyer, I want it witnessed first by someone else. So I remain mostly off grid.

As always, watch your six and never go full retard.

A.C.

Light posting for a while. I’m going off grid a few days.

In my last post I noted a minor observation in the night sky:

“there it was… a gleaming silent line of human intelligence wrought among the stars. Maybe 50 dots in a perfect formation. A constellation. Just a hint of the 2,400 already up there and the vast grid that will be there in due time. It wasn’t sad, like a McDonalds billboard on the interstate, it was glorious, like a reminder that humans can fly if they wish.”

One of the most crushing things I’ve witnessed over my lifetime is the slow gradual embrace of what I call “socialist incapacity”. What I mean is that all people are born with endless potential but they’ve been worked over by powerful forces. They’ve been dumbed down, gaslit, and slowly badgered until they’re hollow and weak. They end up thinking of themselves as less than they once were. From hero to peasant. From peasant to supplicant. From supplicant to a means to an end. A cruel fate; to be a game piece on someone else’s chessboard.

I don’t like the degradation of humanity! Humans aren’t meant to be meat slabs in a vote farm. We’re individuals. We’re amazing! We’re not rabbits or buffalo, unaware animals grazing on what is there but not questioning how it got there. Such limited beings are incapable of deeper concepts like time or honor. Nor are we programmable robots; widget consuming production units… or increasingly often not even production units but votes to be purchased.

We are far more. We’re born with the spirit to soar and the intellect to accomplish that which we imagine. To a human, at least one that hasn’t been beaten into submission, the impossible is only that which hasn’t yet been done. This is why large systems dislike humans. Those who would oppress us sand “humans” and “citizens” down until they’re mere “civilians”, “constituents”, or even “clients”.

Our modern universities and declining social capacity are the smoldering ashes of the Library of Alexandria. It isn’t necessary that I know all these things, but it’s crucial that someone know all those things. Without them we are not mankind, but cavemen with iPhones. Yet former repositories of knowledge are subsumed in waves of foolishness.

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? Just as many as it takes to decide which restroom to use.

I see NASA as the saddest loss of all. NASA’s bureaucratic bumbling consumed most of my lifetime on earth. I was born to a time when “space hotel” was a legitimate concept. A child of the time had a reasonable shot at orbit. That was the trajectory that perished. What replaced it was a four decade committee meeting of the doomed. From this disastrous mess, humanity is just emerging.

Humans went from the Wright Flyer to Apollo 11 in 66 years. (1903 – 1969.) I was born just around when NASA lost heart. It spent a half century stepping on its own dick as I got old and stayed on the ground. NASA isn’t the cause of this. It’s only a reflection of humanity’s failures. We have a super computer in every person’s pocket but use it to spy on law abiding citizens. Who thought that was the best use of all that power and knowledge?

The news today is about airlift of baby formula from Germany. As if we were a people who can’t make baby formula. Of course we can make baby formula. We need only quit shooting ourselves in the foot and do the task.

We lack the progress of a serious people because we are unserious and unaccomplished. Oh sure, NASA did some neat things. They succeeded here and there. It seems sometimes almost by accident they’d cashed so many checks in so many congressional districts that it couldn’t help but make something useful. But overall they spent most of my life as a funds dispersal mechanism with a space hobby. If 66 years went from Kitty Hawk to Tranquility Base I had a reasonable expectation of more in the nearly equal time that has elapsed. They can’t yet repeat what was last accomplished in 1972.

Why? Because NASA is a bureaucracy. Humans have the spirit that wants to go and the mind that makes it possible. Bureaucracies have the opposite, and they’ve the whip hand lately. Masked Karens and cell phone dopamine addicts can’t make the trip. But they can bitch about everything until nobody else has the heart to try.

However, all is not lost. Despair is a sin. It is betted to keep trying than whine like those who never tried.

Watch this:

It’s just a few minutes. What better thing are you doing?

You don’t have to geek out about nerdy tech terms. “Max Q at eleven seconds? Who gives a fuck?” Just bask in what is possible and how hard it was to accomplish. This is the real deal. Every single minute of that video is fraught with risk.

Unlike a society that’s cowering in the basement over COVID or inflation or Monkey Pox or someone who didn’t use the right pronoun, the people that made that rocket fly took on risk. They beat risk. They over came risk. They literally rise above the mundane.

In the video powerful machines are unleashing immense energy. All that massive effort is going through math and software and infinitely delicate machinery; converting thrust and vector to pinpoint accuracy. Smart people worked very hard on this. They lift humanity from the earth’s gravity well, position their machines precisely where they want them, and then direct them to fall back at screaming speeds to earth. At the last minute they pull their machines out of that swan dive to ground and land on a target. A tiny target floating in the ocean.

They do this over and over again. Falcon 9 has has 156 successful flights. What has any politician done to equal that?

SpaceX improves. It learns. SpaceX managed the first vertical landing of stage 1 rocket in 2015. This year they launched and recovered a stage 1 rocket that had been to space 12 times. Their satellite constellation is slowly providing internet service to the entirety of planet earth. I saw it in the skies the night of the lunar eclipse. Nothing said at a podium in DC matters as much as the small but perfect lights I saw in the sky.

Compare that to the bullshit you see in the “news”. Diesel is $6.50 and nobody knows how long truckers will keep delivering stuff. Speaking of stuff, much of it is floating in container ships in the pacific. Maybe farmers can keep producing food like we’re accustomed, or maybe they can’t. The president who got more votes than any other candidate in history took time off funding war in Ukraine to bitch out China about Taiwan. Nothing says “elder statesman” like less than a year between a botched evacuation of Afghanistan and a proxy war of choice against Russia followed maybe by a skirmish or two with China in China’s backyard. You’re free to disagree with me on all my implied opinions, that’s fine. The solution for these is as complex as the causes. But we can probably agree these aren’t good things. Sound, well reasoned people in systems of wise governance aren’t known for fuel shortages, declining food supplies, and war.

Yet through it all. Smart people who actually payed attention in college calculus class are doing what humans are meant to do. They’re launching spacecraft.

You can look up to the sky, or you can look at the shit on your shoes. Right now the shit is talking loudly, using words like disinformation, and spending money so much that the concept of money begins to diminish. It is the skies that show the dream. Idiots cannot reach the sky. Shit cannot build a rocket. Don’t let shit drag you down. In the end, it’s just shit.

Good luck y’all!

A.C.

P.S. Hat tip to Sondrakistan for reminding me how cool it is to be alive right now.

This happened a week ago during the lunar eclipse (which was awesome by the way):

It was very dark. I’d turned off my pole light to see the nigh sky better. I was sitting in a lawn chair watching the heavens when the coyotes started howling.

Coyooooote. Yote yote yote. COYOTE!

Our dog was in the house but she heard it. She wasn’t putting up with that shit!

DOG! DOG, DOG, DOG, DOOOOOOOOG!

There was some back and forth.

Yote, yote, yote… coyoooooooote!

DOG! DOOOOOOOG! DOG DOG!

Then an entirely different sound came from far off in the distance. Faint but clear.

Woooooooooooooooooooooooolf.

The coyotes and our dog shut the hell up! There was a period of dead silence.

I’ve never been particularly impressed or unimpressed with wolves but I’m rethinking that. One single solitary distant howl shut everything else down. It was like a police cruiser rolling past a teenager’s party. Instant silence.

It was a beautiful night. The lunar eclipse was very cool. The wolf never howled again. I guess it had made its point. After about 20 minutes the owls started hooting again.

At one point I caught a gleaming view of several dozen bright satellites in flawless precision. A line, flying west to east in the sky. A piece of the Starlink satellite cluster. I was inspired. NASA could perform a lunar landing when I was a toddler. Science fiction and dreams of spaceflight were at their apex when I was too young to know. NASA has spent most of the ensuing half century crawling up it’s risk averse bureaucratic ass. Meanwhile, America and western society cowers in fear, like coyotes who’ve heard a wolf. Yet there it was… a gleaming silent line of human intelligence wrought among the stars. Maybe 50 dots in a perfect formation. A constellation. Just a hint of the 2,400 already up there and the vast grid that will be there in due time. It wasn’t sad, like a McDonalds billboard on the interstate, it was glorious, like a reminder that humans can fly if they wish.

Between the wolves and the lunar eclipse and Starlink, it was a fabulous evening.

[This post seems like it’s rambling, because it is. Homesteading isn’t always linear. Sometimes it’s not cyclic either. Sometimes it’s just random shit happening when it happens.]

External events forced my hand and I’m in homestead maintenance mode. I’ve gone from my default “make food so if the dipshits in DC starve us all I can smugly eat bacon” to “repair stuff on a budget of not much using whatever scrap materials I can scrounge”. Frankly, I needed a “maintenance year” anyway. I didn’t want to do it while society was mid-flush. I planned to ride it out a bit longer. I guess the universe had other plans.

I knew this was coming. I’ve been coasting a bit and have lost ground with maintenance. The extreme winter consumed my firewood supply, the wet spring did a job on planned tractor work, and “decline” (call it what you want, times ain’t normal) turned the dial to eleven with farm expenses.

This year it was also impossible to get feeder pigs. Well that’s not 100% true. I might, if I put forth extraordinary effort, track down a few rare and hard to find, bigger than normal, feeder pigs. They would cost triple or quadruple the normal price! Or, I could finance a Lamborghini. Both make about the same fiscal sense.

I won’t overpay for livestock! Coupled with “supply chain something something it’s definitely Putin’s fault” effects on the feed supply; I’d lose my shirt. Livestock must make sense. They’re not pets.

So that’s that; no pigs this year. Such a shame. I’d happily raise a bare minimum of family food even if it was at a small loss (just to make sure I’ve got a personal bacon supply) but there’s issues with that that might not be apparent if you haven’t tried it. Homesteading is inefficient anyway so there’s not much wiggle room. If you drop to a scale too small it has huge drawbacks. The labor of one pig (which would be a financial loss but tasty) is super inefficient compared to my usual run of 3-7 of them.

They’re social critters. It’s wise to take that into account. A handful of pigs will amuse themselves like Millennials browsing social media. A group of them under my benevolent care will sit around being happy without causing much fuss right until I promise them free college tuition and put them on a trailer bound for slaughter… also much like what has happened to Millennials.

One pig alone is a very different situation. A solo pig tends to think too much. Some get grumpy. Some become lovable pets that get in your way when you’re trying to mow the lawn. Some turn into Tom Sawyer and go exploring. The point is that one critter becomes a bigger hassle than a handful that will amuse themselves jointly.

Upon reflection I sense the root of modern society’s aversion to people who just want to be left alone. Not to sound too brutal but it’s a thing done in society to humans in recent times. A kid’s schooling now incorporates an endless succession of group projects. Everyone in the group gets a B. A kid’s schooling in the past often had a single kid working through a homework assignment or essay all on their own. One kid gets an A. Another kid gets a C.

Can you sense the kind of human that emerges from both paths? Which upbringing makes a human who’s more likely to get on a cattle car? Is it the same path that makes one human more likely to put another human on the cattle car? Remember 2020! The Government didn’t need to air drop Karen into the grocery store to monitor mask compliance. Karen was already there and trained to enjoy the role. Squawking about “other people’s behavior” filled a void that had been molded into her life. Same goes for the HR department that pushed the vaccine in ways only removed in scale but not direction from Nuremberg. “Get the shot or you’re fired”, that’s oddly construed as “voluntary consent” to a creature raised in a group project world.

Forgive me; one ponders the underbelly of humanity when they pay attention to the cycle of life. Sometimes society has a dark core but you only see after a lonely day of quietly shoveling pig shit.

Enough of that line of thinking. I might get banned for wrongthink!

Back to the subject matter, three pigs isn’t triple the work of one; it’s half. You heard it here first!

That’s just one little factoid in the world of experience that comes from walking the walk. Your average Mother Earth News reading / NPR listening hippie won’t know this truth because they’re more about signaling intent than accomplishing a goal. It’s why you should ignore dipshits fresh out of college that want to instruct about “sustainable living”. The world is filled with fuckers who’ve spent their whole life absorbing ideas from teachers instead of doing things in real life. Never listen to anyone tell you about homesteading unless they drive a truck and it has some rust on it. 

I was uncertain what to do about the pig situation. Fate gave me a nudge. Thanks fate!

A barn collapsed. It collapsed across the pig fence. Mother nature isn’t subtle! I accepted the clue (that had been delivered with a sledge) and planned a year of construction.

Don’t freak out. I had naught but incredibly creaky infrastructure and I knew this day would come. What can I say? You don’t lightly drop big money on new barns just so a critter can shit on a freshly poured slab. Also homesteading is as unglamorous as being a medieval peasant but it works. I’ve been limping along as best I can. This year gravity won and therefore it’s time to fix stuff. Well played physics.

The good news is I’ve already done well. I’ve managed to produce considerable amounts of food over many years using infrastructure somewhere between “shack” and “hovel”. (They’re pigs and chickens, they don’t need a luxury accommodations.) The bad news is I’m out of the game in 2022. Meh, I’ve probably made more food for society than 99.8% of humanity in 2022. That’s not so bad.

I’m a little skittish counting on food from grocery stores but don’t worry, there’s always hunting and I’ll put in a small garden. Plus, I still have some chickens.

Also, I’m told that everything is fine with the food supply because we’ve got top men managing the economy. Any president who got the highest vote count in history surely can keep the grocery stores filled. After all, every single president before him had it well in hand. He can’t be worse than all of them. Right?

In the meantime, I’ve stacked a cord of wood!

Hat tip to Daily Timewaster for the inspiring image. My firewood is in a shitty little shed. It looks nothing like this glorious photo. But it doesn’t matter. It’ll heat my house just as well and I did the stacking myself. That’s what it’s all about!